Audrey Nuna has spent the past year navigating an unexpected breakout and is now deliberately steering her music back toward its roots. With a new single tied to the 2026 Valorant Champions Tour and a major-label push behind her, she’s balancing the pop spotlight that followed a viral film moment with a desire to reconnect to the raw, human elements of her sound.
When a soundtrack placement turned into a cultural flashpoint, Nuna—who blends rap, alt-pop and R&B—suddenly found herself on late-night stages, magazine shoots and festival lineups. That surge of attention introduced her to new listeners but also prompted a creative reassessment: how to keep the momentum while staying true to the voice that built her career.
From soundtrack sensation to a music-first reset
Her earlier releases, including the 2024 project Trench, leaned into moody, genre-fluid textures, shifting from collaborations with peers to interpolations of classic R&B. The unexpected success tied to KPop Demon Hunters pulled a different energy into the mainstream. Nuna’s next step is a conscious attempt to fuse those audiences rather than replace one with the other.
Now signed to Republic Records, she unveils SuperHuman—a high-energy, dance-tinged rap track co-produced with Cirkut—that reconnects with the more aggressive, rhythmic elements of her earlier output while keeping the pop polish she discovered through the film project. The song will also appear as an official track for Riot Games’ Valorant Champions Tour Pacific in Busan, Korea, next year, underscoring the growing overlap between gaming and contemporary pop music.
How the new single came together
The core of SuperHuman took shape quickly: a compact writing session that yielded a demo within hours. Nuna points to a creative chemistry with Cirkut that mixed mainstream pop expertise with a mutual appreciation for experimental influences—artists and scores that sit outside the pop mainstream.
She describes the record as an attempt to capture tension—harmonies that feel both luminous and unsettling—and to foreground the human elements of performance. That meant leaving in small imperfections, exploring analog equipment and preserving the audible traces of a human voice rather than sanitizing every take.
Live shows and audience bridges
Nuna has been reshaping her festival sets to reflect this moment. Rather than leaning exclusively on the new, she’s reintroducing older tracks from Trench and A Liquid Breakfast, peppering in the soundtrack hit and debuting SuperHuman live to watch how audiences respond. The approach is less a reset than a bridge—an attempt to marry what fans discovered through the character-driven soundtrack with what Nuna wants to say as herself.
- What to expect live: a mix of older catalog tracks and the new single, testing how different fan groups react in real time.
- Creative direction: louder, more rhythm-forward songs that still embrace pop hooks and harmonic complexity.
- Industry move: Republic Records support and another high-profile tie-in with Riot Games for global exposure.
Artistic intent and personal recalibration
Beyond strategy, Nuna frames this period as a personal reinvention. She says the goal isn’t just to reintroduce herself to listeners but to rediscover who she is as an artist—moving from surface-level aesthetics to storytelling that resonates. That means accepting imperfect sessions, trying new collaborators, and allowing discomfort to shape the work.
Her references are telling: church harmonies from childhood, string arrangements and film scores she grew up with, and a curiosity about the textures analog gear can add. Those influences feed into a sound that aims to feel lived-in and tactile rather than digitally polished.
Why the Valorant partnership matters
Tying SuperHuman to a major esports event positions Nuna at the intersection of music and competitive gaming, an ecosystem that reaches young, highly engaged global audiences. She sees the song as “visceral body music”—something that amps up physical performance and translates in arenas, arenas of both music and gaming.
For Nuna, that crossover is practical as well as artistic: it’s a way to introduce her solo voice to listeners who first encountered her through a fictional character, and to show that her work can power both a narrative soundtrack and high-energy live performances.
Small rituals, big contrasts
Offstage, Nuna emphasizes solitude and physical care as essential counterweights to touring and promotion. Rest for her is often simply being alone; she also credits deep-tissue work with easing the physical strain of performance.
That balance—private recharge versus public intensity—feeds back into the music she’s making: songs that are meant to be felt as much as heard.
Quick facts
- New single: “SuperHuman”—first solo release since Trench.
- Label: Republic Records.
- Collaboration: Produced with Cirkut; writing contributions include Madison Love and others.
- Gaming tie: Official track for the 2026 Valorant Champions Tour Pacific in Busan, South Korea.
- Creative aim: Emphasize human imperfection, analog textures, and narrative songwriting.
This phase for Audrey Nuna is as much about audience translation as it is about personal artistic growth. As she layers the theatrical pop exposure she gained through the soundtrack with the grittier, rap-forward instincts that first defined her, the next year will test whether that bridge can create a unified identity—on record, on stage and in the rapidly expanding space where music and gaming meet.
